Re: WMF export on Linux

[Hans Breuer <Hans Breuer org>]

At 07:30 25.03.03 +0100, Cyrille Chepelov wrote:
> Le Mon, Mar 24, 2003, à 05:12:16PM -0800, ALeX Julien a écrit:
> > Hard as I've tried, my team mates are still using Ms Word + Visio,
> > while I'm on OpenOffice + Dia. Everything works quite fine still, but
> > PNG is not the best format if they need to modify something on my
> > exported DIAgrams.
> >
> > AFAIK, Dia/win32 does WMF out of the -er- installer, but I'm on
> > Linux. While my team mates get back from the dark side of the force,
> > is there a way to get the wmf plugin to work on Linux? Or maybe a
> > fine external converter from DXF/EPS/CGM (vector) formats to WMF/EMF?
>
> The WMF export uses the Win32 API, which is obviously unavailable on
> non-Win32 platforms (unless we wanted to require libwine linked into dia,
> which I think is out of question).
>
> One way of solving the problem would be to write ANOTHER WMF export plug-in
> (which would *not* be compiled on Win32), using libwmf. for the *nix
> platforms. 

Another way would be to look in the source directory of the exiting
wmf plug-in and just extend it ;) from dia/plug-ins/wmf_gdi.cpp :

/*
 * WMF_GDI is an implementation of Windoze GDI functions required
 * for saving of Windows Meta Files, if the Win32 API isn't 
 * available. It isn't finished yet but shoud be easily extendable
 * for someone interested in Dia WMF support on non Windoze 
 * platforms.
 *
 * (c) 2000 Hans Breuer <Hans Breuer Org>
 [...]
 */

> On Win32, I don't see the point of using an emulation library
> when you have the real thing in the first place.
Whole heartly agreed.

> (I just checked the libwmf-bin which is on my system, it does have wmf2svg &
> al, but unfortunately for you not the other way around)
Last time I looked the only thing libwmf offered was wmf import.
And I still can't believe that the marshalled gdi mess (aka wmf)
is the right choice for vector data exchange ...

The formats which I would try are svg (if the destination program
is reasonable modern) or wpg for older destinations. Importing
them into Word or even better WordPerfect worked quite reasonable
last time I looked.

        Hans

-------- Hans "at" Breuer "dot" Org -----------
Tell me what you need, and I'll tell you how to 
get along without it.                -- Dilbert